"No! no!" the young man cried, cowering before him. "It is not true!"
"One who was ready to do murder," Colonel John continued pitilessly, "because it suited him to remove a man!"
"No! no!" the wretched youth cried, almost grovelling before him. "It was all of them!—it was all!"
"It was not all!" Colonel John retorted; but there was a keenness in his face which showed that he had still something to learn.
"It was—those two-on deck!" The McMurrough cried eagerly. "I swear it was! They said—it was necessary."
"They were one with you in condemning! Be it so! I believe you! But who spared?"
"I!" The McMurrough cried, breathlessly eager to exculpate himself. "It was I alone. I! I swear it. I sent the boy!"
"You spared? Yes, and you alone!" the Colonel made answer. "So I thought, and out of your own mouth you are condemned. You spared because you learned that I had made a will, and you feared lest that which had passed to me in trust might pass to a stranger for good and all! You spared because it was—because you thought it was to your interest, your advantage to spare! I say, out of your own mouth you are condemned."
James McMurrough had scarcely force to follow the pitiless reasoning by which the elder man convicted him. But his conscience, his knowledge of his own motives, filled the hiatus, and what his tongue did not own his colourless face, his terrified eyes, confessed.
"You have fallen into our hands," Colonel John continued, grave as fate. "Why should we not deal with you as you would have dealt with us? No!"—the young man by a gesture had appealed to those on deck, to their escape, to their impunity—"no! They may have consented to my death; but as the judge condemns, or the soldier kills; you—you, for your private profit and advantage. Nevertheless, I shall not deal so with you. You can go as they are going—abroad, to return at a convenient season, and I hope a wiser man. Or——"